


you are the sound that i hear

by brophigenia



Series: Pynch Week 2018 [3]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dancing, Day 3: Bonfire, M/M, Pynch Week 2018, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 19:27:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15419931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: “Ronan, it’s Witch’s Night.” She reminded him. “Why can’t you just have fun? Like a normal person?”“Because, Maggot,” he said, straightening up finally and starting for the door. He threw his parting words to her over his shoulder. “I’m not a normal person.”(It's Witch's Night, the biggest festival of the year.)





	you are the sound that i hear

**Author's Note:**

> really, I'm not sure what this is.

“I don’t know why you’re so nervous,” Blue said, meeting his eyes in the mirror. She was toying with the ribbon tied around her head; privately, Ronan thought the thing made her skull look smaller than it normally did, and the bow made her look like some kind of macabre present. “You’ve scared off all the boys in the village.”

Ronan snorted, and scrubbed a hand over his shaved scalp, trying to ignore his own reflection. “Except Kavinsky,” he pointed out, and stepped closer to the vanity table, running his fingertips over the flickering candle flames. One bit him and he hissed, sticking the burnt digit in his mouth to soothe the burn.

“Except Kavinsky,” Blue conceded, and frowned. She opened her mouth and then closed it, and tore the ribbon from her hair with a frustrated sigh.

Ronan sighed too, and stepped up behind her. “Give me that, Maggot.” He said, and wrapped it thrice around her head, securing it with a knot at the base of her skull, hidden beneath her hair. In the mirror they appeared as different as night and day. Blue stuck her tongue out at him but her small hand caught his before he could draw it back down to his side. She squeezed his hand, a silent _thank you._

He hummed and set his chin atop her head, snarling his nose and finally examining his own reflection. All sharp angles and points, and the harsh length of his hair only added to the overall impression that just _looking_ at Ronan Lynch might cut you.

“I guess you’ll hog Gansey all night,” he stated. It was odd to talk with his lower jaw pressed against the top of her head. He didn’t move regardless, feeling calmer with the skin-to-skin contact. Less panicky. He fucking hated crowds. He hated Witch’s Night even more. They weren’t a spectacle to be gawked at, and yet the others seemed to relish in the attention. Even his _mother_ loved Witch’s Night, and she usually preferred to wander the woods collecting flowers all day.

“It’s not like we won’t talk to you,” Blue rolled her eyes at his theatrics.

“It’s not the same.” _And you know it,_ he wanted to add.

“Ronan, it’s Witch’s Night.” She reminded him. “Why can’t you just have _fun?_ Like a normal person?”

“Because, Maggot,” he said, straightening up finally and starting for the door. He threw his parting words to her over his shoulder. “I’m _not a normal person.”_

Whatever reply she had for him was lost as he took his leave, passing open doors where the other inhabitants of the Foxhouse were primping and preening for the night. Declan, home for the occasion, carefully buttoning his best vest. His mother braiding flowers into Calla’s hair while Maura painted her lips black at the mirror. Orla, slathering herself in a concoction that smelled strongly of rose petals and salt. Even Matthew, humming merrily as he let Opal paint a streak of sunset orange across his eyes.

Ronan just wanted to get _out,_ and so he found himself out in the barn in his mucking boots, getting the pitchfork so he could tend to the stalls. He’d stripped off the nice white shirt that Matthew had presented him with that morning and hung it carefully on one of the hooks so as not to dirty it, and was in the middle of tossing a forkful of shit and soiled hay when he looked up and was startled to see another person.

“Holy _shit!”_ Ronan yelped, losing his grip. The mess fell upon his boots, some splattering onto his pants. Adam laughed, and Ronan’s cheeks went scarlet. He scowled. “What the hell are you doing, Parrish?” He demanded. “Sneaking up on me? Fuck!”

Adam _kept_ laughing, the sound warm and amused, and Ronan rolled his eyes so he wouldn’t fall to his knees.

“Are you going like _that_ to Witch’s Night?” Adam asked, eyeing Ronan and his shit-spattered boots, bare-chested with his suspenders hanging down to his knees. “Should be a hit.” Ronan briefly imagined rolling up into the village square like this, and then shuddered, imagining Kavinsky’s reaction.

“Matthew gave me a shirt.” Ronan mumbled, jerking his head to where it hung in all its intricately-embroidered glory. Matthew had probably woven a dozen spells into the thing, for protection and happiness and shit. He was always doing that kind of shit. Whenever Calla or Maura or any of the others spoke, he peered at them with wide, amazed eyes, an angel learning from a houseful of demons.

“You’ll look pretty in that.” Adam said noncommittally, and had stolen the pitchfork from Ronan before he was even done sputtering. He went to whirl around and demand what the _hell_ the farmhand was playing at, but was interrupted by the sound of Declan shouting his name.

“Dammit, Ronan, it’s time to _leave!”_ And then he was left in dirty trousers and muck boots, carrying his shirt, all alone. Declan took one look at him and descended into _fits._ Ronan couldn’t punch Orla, Declan’s chosen backup, so he found himself at their mercy, being shoved and tugged into new pants and a pair of fancy leather boots, rubbed down with scented oils and wrestled into his new shirt. They only pronounced him _good enough_ when he stood before them fully dressed and reeking of enough fucking bergamot to choke a mule.

They didn’t take the wagon, as was tradition. Instead they stood lined up in front of the house while Maura made her way from person to person, eyeing them critically before smearing a line of blood (whose, Ronan was unsure) over their lips and presenting them with a mask pulled from the sack at her side. Opal was given one made to look like a faun, while his mother’s most closely resembled a bear. Declan wore a stag’s face. Blue, a fox. Orla, a swan. Matthew a particularly sweet-looking wolf.

Finally she arrived at Ronan, and where before he found it difficult to watch her ministrate to the others now he could not look away from her dark eyes, like pools of boiling black ink in her face. She smiled at him, looking a thousand years old and utterly unlike herself, like she always did when the Goddess burned particularly strong within her.

“Ronan,” she murmured in a voice so deep it was nearly subvocal. “Our sharpest boy.” He half-expected to see a viper’s face pulled from the bottomless bag for him, and dreaded it. Last year he’d been given a viper, and wept bitterly behind the church in town the entire night, away from prying eyes. How terrible to know that the reflection of your inner self was some poisonous, wrathful thing. How terrible to have everyone _else_ see it, too.

Maura smiled at him and reached nearly her entire arm into the bag that appeared to only be as long as her hand. From its depths she pulled his mask, and it was not the familiar green-skinned adder that greeted him but a mass of black feathers and sharp beak, glinting almost blue-violet-green in the dying sunlight.

A raven, and something in his chest unclenched at the sight.

Maura dipped the fingers of her free hand into the bowl of blood that Calla offered to her, smearing two of them over his lips from his philtrum clear to his chin. Then she tied his mask onto his face, and Ronan _settled._

He grinned at her, both Ronan and Raven, tasting the sharp iron tang of the blood on his teeth.

And then it was time.

They moved through the woods that separated them from the village silently, smoothly, in the same long, straight line they’d stood in as Maura masked them. Ronan felt like everyone’s heartbeat was his own; he felt like each breath they took inflated his own lungs, too.

The entire village was lit with candles and strings of lanterns. Music rose up from the square, drums and yells and flutes. The air was thick with the smell of roasting meats and baking breads and freshly-uncorked wines. It was all for them, and for once Ronan did not feel like a spectacle as he strode through the streets. He felt like a _god,_ with the villagers calling out thank-yous for the bountiful harvest and unwavering protection they’d enjoyed since last year’s Witch’s Night.

It was odd. Usually he moved through these streets as just another boy come to barter for groceries, see the sights, get a pint of ale at the tavern. He was treated no different the other 364 days of the year. But it was Witch’s Night, and suddenly he was someone of _note._ Someone to be _thanked._

They stood before the villagers as Gansey’s mother gave a rousing speech in praise of their unwavering efforts to preserve the people and peace of Henrietta Village, all of them stiller than nature and peering from behind their masks at the naked-skinned _normal people_ who gawked and clapped and cheered.

And then it was over, and the music struck back up, and it was time to _party._

Gansey found them easily, passing Ronan and Blue each a large tankard of honeyed mead and dragging them by their elbows to the table that held the gigantic roasted hog, babbling all the while about the preparations and the ceremonies and local gossip that he hadn’t gotten to tell them about in the _two days_ they’d been separated. An eternity, truly, and Ronan listened for a while until the conversation devolved into Gansey and Blue staring soulfully into each others’ eyes. Well, Gansey staring soulfully into Blue’s eyes. Blue was eyeing Gansey with more hunger than she had when she looked at the food on her plate, and so Ronan gave it about ten minutes before they were _breathing_ all over each other’s faces _intimately._

He finished off his tankard and decided to make his escape. A new song started up and a roar of approval came from the crowd. The villagers writhed against each other, against whoever they could find. He saw Declan and Ashley twined together, Maura dancing with the blacksmith she’d been flirting with for months, his mother dancing by herself. Even Matthew had found someone to dance with, and Ronan spared a smile at that before he went back to concentrating on getting somewhere private without Kavinsky or any of his dogs seeing.

Of course, that was when his wrist was caught up and he was tuged into a fever-warm body. He got ready to deliver a right-hook _straight_ into Kavinsky’s face before realizing that it _wasn’t_ Kavinsky that had snared him.

It was _Adam,_ with his own blood-smeared mouth and a mask like tree bark, and Ronan couldn’t speak. Couldn’t say a _word,_ and the Raven was murmuring in his mind, his gut, his ears that this was a tree it would be _very_ happy to perch in.

“Dance with me,” Adam murmured, and Ronan didn’t even consider refusing. He’d never danced before, but fighting was almost the same, and Adam was a good leader. He knew all the steps. It was… _reassuring_ that Adam was leading him, taking charge, and Ronan’s head spun with incredulity at himself even as he wound his arms around Adam’s neck to bring their bodies closer. Each twist of their hips and hopping step brought them into direct contact, and if Ronan thought that touching _Blue_ made the urgent buzz in him quiet down, it was _nothing_ to the way that he felt touching _Adam._

Adam moved them closer and closer to the massive bonfire, until there was nothing but the heat against Ronan’s back and the orangey-red glow of it on Adam’s dusky skin. Ronan swallowed thickly. The song grew to fevered proportions around them, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Blue and Gansey, wildly moving with the reckless abandon of animals rolling around in a clearing. Was that how he and Adam looked? It was hard to even _think,_ through the haze of heat and _want._

“Kiss me,” Ronan heard himself gasp out, entirely without his permission. He couldn’t even care about his own lack of control; suddenly that was all he could comprehend, the thought of Adam kissing him.

Adam didn’t require convincing; their lips met in a searing, toothsome maul, their masks bumping together and their feet planted, no longer weaving amongst the couples. There was only their mouths moving together and their hands roaming and the restless, slow grind of their hips. Adam’s hands found his lower back, found his _ass,_ and Ronan _wanted._ He _wanted,_ and the Raven _wanted,_ he wanted Adam and he’d wanted Adam for _so long_ and it was Witch’s Night.

It was Witch’s Night, and he wanted his _reward._

“The woods,” he said against Adam’s mouth, _into_ Adam’s mouth. “The _woods,_ ” he insisted, when Adam showed no signs of stopping their display of passion that would quickly turn into a display of _public indecency._ It was Witch’s Night, but Ronan was not losing his fucking virginity in front of the entire village.

Luckily, Adam agreed when he came to his senses enough to realize that there was something to agree _to,_ because Ronan couldn’t have promised that he couldn’t have been _persuaded_ to be fucked right here on the cobblestones in front of Mayor Gansey and everyone else.

The woods were a comforting cloak that fell upon their bodies as soon as they cleared the treeline, and Ronan couldn’t stop _touching_ Adam; his fingers trailed the finely-wrought features of Adam’s face, touched greedily of his collarbones and measured the span of Adam’s shoulders. It was like once he finally _let_ himself, he could no longer stop, for love or money or bodily harm.

There was just _Adam,_ and _Adam_ didn’t seem to have many objections, truth be told.

Adam led them through the woods like he had just the place in mind, like it wasn’t pitch black midnight and they weren’t without a lantern.

Of course, maybe the Tree was whispering to him the way the Raven was whispering to Ronan, because soon enough they came upon a clearing flooded with enough moonlight that Ronan could count the freckles on Adam’s throat.

They descended upon each other then, wordless and half-mad with their coupling. Later, Ronan could not have said what they’d done if there was a knife to his throat. He wasn’t sure _what_ configurations they’d found themselves in, only that when it was all over they lay gasping and naked, pressed all along each other’s bodies with the evidence of their sated pleasure between them.

“Goddamn, Parrish.” Ronan mumbled, his mouth full of Adam’s hair. “Where the hell were you hiding _that?”_

Adam smothered a laugh into Ronan’s shoulder, shaking both their bodies. “In the stables. In the loft. Outside your window.” He kept laughing, listing off everywhere he’d ever _hidden that._

Ronan’s lips curved into a smug smile. “Outside my fucking window? Parrish, you _pervert._ ” He sounded delighted, and Adam’s heart swelled in his chest.

“Ten copper says Blue and Gansey jumped the broom.” He said, stroking his fingers over Ronan’s back, tracing his tattoo. Ronan laughed.

  
“That’s no fucking bet.” He said. “ _Fifteen_ copper says Gansey’s the one who wore the flower crown.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me @ brophigenia.tumblr.com


End file.
